Edit: Apparently, negative trust is not relevant to this discussion.
My point was that if they wanted to return under new identities, they could not.
I don't understand why someone can't return under a new identity. Can you explain specifically what would prevent someone from doing that?
I think that OP was indeed clear about that: It is not about negative trust feedback. It is about
privacy. The
possibility high probability of being outed, and the anti-privacy culture that aggravates that problem.
Observe that I gave Lauda as another example. In the immediate aftermath of her disappearance, some of the speculation was so disrespectful of her privacy that I was immediately motivated to write this,
q.v.:Now, to elaborate—
...However, the forum has accreted a self-appointed clique of vigilantes who delight in hunting for real or imagined alternate pseudonyms....
I haven't noticed this to be a problem. Can you go into more detail about it?
I do not want to derail this into a Reputation drama about my personal experiences, which were contextual in OP to explain my thinking about Satoshi. (I am anyway entirely ignoring Reputation, except for a few threads where I am already involved; who has time for that?) But to avoid going off into the weeds with abstract theoretical discussion, some concrete examples will serve to illustrate the nature of the problem.
Please read the following with the question in your mind:
What would happen to a Satoshi alt?Satoshi is orders of magnitude more famous than I am. He has numerous people on the forum (and in the mainstream media) speculating on his identity, on his whereabouts, and on what happened to him. Many people also hate him, or secretly hate him, or are quietly seething with jealousy over the alleged (and likely untrue) million-BTC Satoshi stash.
Please don’t focus on particulars, but generalize the particulars.
What kind of culture does this forum have? Why is it socially acceptable to pry into alt accounts that are properly nobody’s business? How can we expect for a hypothetical Satoshi alt to be treated, when
the forum’s culture embraces cliques of “highly trusted” Sherlock Holmes wannabes who relish the prospect of outing people for no reason?
It is not about those particular DT users, either. Don’t particularize this argument to them.
Example A: Ploni Almoni. In 2020,
a new account with
an idiomatic Hebrew name for ‘Anonymous’ posted a topic on a 2014 Glenn Greenwald article, based on the Snowden archive,
about “How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations”. (
Full-thread snapshot.) I was perplexed at the vehemence of negative reactions to that; the reactions were bizarre, inexplicable!
Why would a group of high-trust users lash out at that, spit on it, publicly ridicule it?
More perplexing still: A deep-green, high-inclusion DT neutral-tagged that account as a “fake newbie”—plus with what looks to me like a thinly-veiled antisemitic remark; oh,
of course that Jewish-looking account which you irrationally hate must be from the Mossad, out to get you!
Most perplexing: A group of DT members who immediately
disliked that account also
immediately decided that
it was I. Some of them raised this alleged connection to ridicule me/allegedly-me in other threads,
at least as late as nine months after. They patently desired for that account to be publicly perceived as a nullius alt. (
I “admitted” that that account was mine, but only because he/she had publicly requested that
everyone should “admit” to being him/her. Outside that context, I neither admit nor deny that it is mine.)
The creator of that account obviously wanted to keep it anonymous, and was clearly using an alt account in good faith to discuss issues of public importance.
Example B: death_wish. In May of 2022,
a Newbie account posted in the Wall Observer about his getting wrecked on leverage. He made no attempt to hide his being an experienced Bitcoiner, and an experienced user of the Bitcoin Forum. He strongly implied having experience with the Wall Observer; he named WO regulars whose advice he sought.
There soon ensued some thoughtless speculation that he is I. And then—
Within less than 48 hours after the account was created, a deep-green, high-inclusion DT neutral-tagged him as “not-a-newbie”—with a gratuitous insult:
He disappeared for a few weeks, then restarted actively posting about his margin account problems. The same DT and several of her public associates took to following him around, calling him “nullius”. They smeared “nullius” every way they could—they even
affirmatively claimed, without any evidence, that he (allegedly I) was lying about his margin liquidations, for reasons I cannot fathom.
N.b. that D.W. made it excruciatingly clear that he was not seeking any kind of financial assistance.
So thoroughly did that clique associate that account with me in the public mind that
a supposedly pro-privacy user blatantly addressed death_wish as “nullius”. (Note to self: Be skeptical of BlackHatCoiner on privacy issues.)
The creator of that account obviously wanted to keep it anonymous. He was clearly using an alt account in good faith to discuss issues of personal importance to him—and explicitly to warn newbies about
the dangers of margin accounts, as he said many times. His very first post contained
a graphic entitled “object lesson”.
I have never admitted or denied the allegation that I am
death_wish; and in his entire post history thus far,
death_wish has never admitted or denied being me. I do like to rub it in the faces of the anti-privacy canaille that they have no power to force me to answer that question either way.
Neener-neener. Whether it’s “yes” or “no”, if I ever violate my own longtime policy either way, it will need to be for a some reason infinitely better than the peremptory demands of some dumb trolls.
Example C: Unidentified accounts that are definitely not mine. I have seen several accounts that were
not mine accused of being nullius alts, by the same group of DT members. I cannot identify the accounts, without breaching my “neither admit nor deny” policy: I can only identify accounts with neither admission nor denial, or deny unidentified accounts.
Whereupon, I reiterate:
If I have such troubles, what would Satoshi’s risk be? Millions of people around the world are eager for a Satoshi sighting. He could not afford the risk. Naturally, I try to help give him an anonymity set—well, either that, or Satoshi is a grandmaster troll here:
Nullius' knowledge about blockchain science and cryptography is a dead giveaway. His arrogance is a dead giveaway. He is an alt-account of a member who was here long before Bitcoin was even talked about in the mainstream. No way in the world he just registered in this forum last March 29, 2017. If you're an expert in blockchains, you pretty much have visited or even make posts here in Bitcointalk in the past.
[...]
He could even be Satoshi.
I neither admit nor deny the allegation that I am Satoshi.
FYI, I have given negative trust to many scammers on all of their multiple accounts because they are scammers and not because they have multiple accounts. I don't see anything wrong with that.
Also, I have heard that people try to cheat signature campaigns somehow by having multiple accounts, and they are given negative trust. TBH, I don't really know anything about that and I don't really care, unless the signature campaign people are expanding their agenda beyond just signature campaigns.
FYI, I have experience with being in DT. I tagged accounts for those same reasons. I also supported Lauda’s tags and flags on those same grounds, and for account sales/farming.
In one instance,
the cat almost broke my mouse with clicking to support Type-1 flags when
she mass-flagged more than one hundred accounts, which were being abused by one individual to grab slots in “one slot per person” signature campaigns and sigspam the hell out of the forum. Caught with blockchain evidence
by Bitcoin_Arena. I always checked the evidence independently.
I don’t see anything wrong with that.
He also went into hiding, because he knew that the 3L3tter agencies will want to hunt him down.... and also greedy criminals and beggars that would want to get their hands on his money.
Satoshi created Bitcoin to serve the people and not himself.... and he stepped back into the shadows. He knows that there are VERY clever people out there that might be able to DoX him, so why risk all that for no motive to come back.
Quoted by way of helping to explain this. It squarely answers about 80% of what franky1 said, plus much of odolvlobo’s puzzlement.
I've never really experienced anyone ever asking me about my identity here, sometimes about location but that only in reference to actual topic being discussed. I guess it's different because if I ever leave (or come back with different user) not many people will realize or even care.
[...]
But from my own view, I don't understand or agree that this culture happens. OR if it's culture it only affects those who do get involved in forum business. I think many more are like me only involved in the topical discussions, Trust and Spam report at a basic level. It never comes to my mind to identify the person behind a username.
I think the problem is proportional to how unusual the personality is. How rare it is. And how much of a motive anyone has to care about
that particular person.
Not to come off as arrogant towards you—there is just no other way to say it—does anyone care what you do?
Now, would people care what Satoshi did?
How many nosy busybodies would be thrilled to discover a Satoshi alt? Not to mention TLAs, as Kakmakr mentioned! That is a high threat model. Let’s start with with droves of idiots who simply want to gossip.
Wow, cool, this is Satoshi!
Any new identity of mine will attract such speculation; whether it is correct or incorrect, the speculation itself will follow me around. You have no such concerns, for there is nothing special about you.
Unique little snowflakes have the luxury of anonymity: They are all alike. Fungible and indistinguishable.
I am truly unique. In style and substance. There is only one of me in this world. The content of my thoughts is itself a globally unique identifier—my soul is unique, in a mythopoetic sense.
(Ironically, the same trolls who are mentally fixated on pursuing my identity will thereupon accuse me of arrogance, perhaps even of grandiosity. They themselves inadvertently help to show the world just how special I am!)
i personally never used another account and if mouth dribblers wanted to call someone else a franky.or suggest other accounts are me.. thats their problem. it just makes them look more like idiots for even trying. let them fall down their own holes they dig themselves..
Well, then I suppose you do not have this experience.
satoshi, lauda,yourself would not need to provide birth certificate Id to prove your return from the dead. it can be made obvious by your writing style and your context.
That is the problem! The whole point of OP is about the unlikelihood that any high-profile Bitcoiners could ever successfully contribute under a new identity, disconnected from the old identity.
the github is open if they wanted to arrest anyone with control over bitcoin they would have arrested bitcoin core maintainer Wlad by now, ..
Outright “arrest” is not the only concern!
Wladimir makes it excruciatingly clear that he does
not control Bitcoin Core development.
He does not want a target on his back. (And this is one of the things I most respect about him:
Wladimir gets it.) Please do not compare his position to Satoshi’s. Wladimir does not have, and
does not want the type of power that Satoshi would unavoidably have just from being Satoshi.
(really?? deleting posts from who disagrees with you?)
To avoid waste of time, clutter, and sigspamming, I delete low-value posts with stupid arguments that miss the whole point of a statement, and that interpret the word “denial” as meaning ‘psychological denial’ when I was speaking of ‘admit or deny’ (!). Re-posting what the topic starter deleted is rude and unwise. You are now personally unwelcome in all of my threads.
Go away. Learn some forum manners. Learn to read. Or if you prefer to whine about my usage of self-moderation, some scummy troll created a whole thread for that.
Note for the record: While I was writing, editing, and gathering links and images for this post, the topic was moved by staff to Meta from Bitcoin Discussion, where I had originally filed it.
